YouTube comments take three formatting symbols, YouTube Help says: asterisks for *bold*, underscores for _italics_, and hyphens for -strikethrough-. Type the symbol right before the first word and right after the last, with no space in between. YouTube hides the symbols once you post and shows the words styled.
How to bold, italicize, and strike through a YouTube comment
- Bold: type an asterisk on each side, as in
*20 minutes*. - Italics: type an underscore on each side, as in
_whole wheat_. - Strikethrough: type a hyphen on each side, as in
-two cups-.
To style a phrase, put the symbols around the whole phrase. YouTube Help lists the same three symbols on its Android and iPhone and iPad pages, so they work in the app too. A web address in a comment shows as a link, the same page says.
How to bold and italicize at once
Put one pair of symbols inside the other, as in *_like this_* or _*like this*_. Both orders gave bold italics in the public comments we read in October 2026. Strikethrough nests the same way, as in *_-like this-_*. Keep the symbols touching each other and the words, with no spaces between them.
Why YouTube comment formatting isn’t working
In the public comments we read in October 2026, YouTube left the symbols on screen in these cases:
- Punctuation right after the closing symbol, as in
*word*,or_word_!. Put it inside:*word,*. - A space just inside a symbol, as in
* word *. Take the space out:*word*. - A letter right outside a symbol, as in
s*bold*or_per_fect. A style starts and ends at the edge of a word, so leave a space there. - A quote, bracket, or colon right before the opening symbol, as in
"*word*"orNote:*word*. Put the quote or bracket inside, as in*"word"*, or add a space after the colon. - A line break inside the style. Each line needs its own pair of symbols.
- Strikethrough with no letter in it, as in
-2023-. Numbers or signs on their own stay plain, so put a word inside too. - Doubled symbols, as in Markdown’s
**word**. YouTube styles the outer pair and shows the inner one. Use one symbol on each side. - Tildes, as in
~~word~~. YouTube shows them as typed. Use hyphens for strikethrough.
A closing symbol that can’t close is skipped, so a style can run on to the next symbol on the same line that can. The preview above shows each of these cases the way YouTube does.
How to show an asterisk or underscore as typed
YouTube has no escape character. In the comments we read, a backslash before a symbol stayed on screen and didn’t stop the style. A symbol shows as typed when nothing can pair with it: a lone *, one with a space after it, as in 5 * 3, or one between two letters, as in file_name.
Does formatting work in replies, Shorts, and the YouTube app?
Yes. YouTube Help lists the same three symbols for comments on Android and iPhone and iPad, the same as on a computer. In the public comments we read in October 2026, replies and comments on Shorts followed the same rules as any other comment.
Can you bold a YouTube title or channel name?
No. YouTube Help gives video descriptions bold, italic, and strikethrough buttons at the bottom of the description box, and documents no formatting for titles or channel names. Sites that offer bold titles paste look-alike letters from Unicode’s math alphabets instead. Those aren’t the letters your words are made of, so search and screen readers may not read them as words.
How we checked these rules
YouTube Help documents the three symbols but not spaces, punctuation, or line breaks. The other rules come from public comments under videos that teach comment formatting, read in October 2026: we compared the symbols left on screen with where each style started and stopped. YouTube can change how it reads comments, so we check again before updating this page.
More tools for comments
To find a comment you posted before, search your Google Takeout export with the YouTube comment history search. A time typed in a comment, such as 4:05, links to that moment in the same video, as YouTube’s 2008 post describes. To share a moment anywhere else, make a link with the YouTube timestamp link generator. To check a title or description against YouTube’s limits, use the YouTube character limit counter. Retube, our free browser extension, groups the channels you follow into topic feeds inside YouTube, such as Cooking or Learning.
To set that up by hand or with Retube, read how to organize YouTube subscriptions.